Wednesday, January 10, 2007

What's in a game?

Recently Indian cricket team, as usual performed miserably in South Africa in both forms of game. Once again, people started criticizing the attitude of cricketers and started questioning their commitment and sense of patriotism. While thinking over this issue, I came across a nice anecdote in Eduardo Galeano’s book “Días y noches de amor y de Guerra”. It’s a story of Dynamo Kyiv, the most famous football club of Ukraine. In the summer of 1942 Ukraine was under Nazi occupation. The Nazi organized a football match. Between national team of Nazi armed forces and a team of Dynamo Kyiv made up of workers of the wool factory. The Supreme against the starving. The stadium was packed to full capacity. Nazis scored the first goal. The stadium shrunk to silence. Soon, the entire stadium lights up when Dynamo scored the equalizer. Just before the half time, Dynamo scored another goal. They went into half time leading, 2-1. The commandant of the occupying troops sent his assistants with his message. Dyanamo team listened to the message, “Our team has never been defeated on an occupied territory. If you win, you will be executed!”

Players returned. Within a few minutes, Dynamo scored the third goal. People were on their feet, right behind the team, shouting and cheering at the top of their otherwise oppressed voices. The fourth goal and the stadium erupted to unprecedented celebrations. Suddenly the final whistle was blown. Heroes of Dynamo were taken to a high precipice and executed.

3 comments:

Hey Kandarp, finally!!! :)It´s a small world after all... I´ve got a co worker that have a son playing in Dynamo Kyiv professional team and i asked him about that. He already went to Ukraine and the story really happened (sorry Kandy, i thought it could be a tale... :S )Of course his son plays in a different team, in a different time of history but I don´t believe they would do the same nowadays. I think that by that time they played against nazis and put their necks in risk for a simple reason... love. Because we do well when we love what we do... (I can´t say anything about Indian Cricket team...)Or...... maybe not..... sometimes what impulse us are feelings less noble... they could be furious, so, they were blind, didn´t notice the danger...Love or fury human beings are always surprising me...